Original article

doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2006.00204.x

The use of computer technology in university

teaching and learning: a critical perspective
N. Selwyn
Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff, UK

Abstract Despite huge efforts to position information and communication technology (ICT) as a central
tenet of university teaching and learning, the fact remains that many university students and
faculty make only limited formal academic use of computer technology. Whilst this is usually
attributed to a variety of operational deficits on the part of students, faculty, and universities,
this paper considers the wider social relations underpinning the relatively modest use of tech-
nology in higher education. The paper explores how university use of computer technology is
shaped into marginalized and curtailed positions by a variety of actors. From the ‘writing’ of
ICT at a national policy level through to the marginalization of ICT within the lived ‘student
experience’, a consistent theme emerges where computer technology use is constructed in
limited, linear, and rigid terms far removed from the creative, productive, and empowering uses
which are often celebrated by educational technologists. In the light of such constraints, the
paper considers how these dominant constructions of a peripheral and limited use of ICT may
be challenged by the higher education community. In particular, it concludes by reflecting on
current critical thinking about how educational technologists can foster a more expansive and
empowered use of computer technology within university settings.

Keywords critical theory, ICT, Internet, higher education, university.

revolutionized and revitalized the university sector.

Introduction
The potential of computer technologies to revolutionize
university teaching and learning has long been cel-
ebrated by education technologists. Academic journals
in the field of educational technology such as JCAL
regularly feature research focusing on the ability of
technologies like the computer and the Internet to accel-
erate university students’ learning, enhance and democ-
ratize access to educational opportunities, and support
interactivity, interaction, and collaboration (e.g. Draper
& Brown 2004; Corlett et al. 2005; Oliver 2006). In
short, the turn towards computer-based teaching and
learning over the past 20 years is assumed to have
Accepted: 11 September 2006
Correspondence: Neil Selwyn, School of Social Sciences, Glamorgan
Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT, UK. Email:
selwynnc@cardiff.ac.uk
Thus, stark ultimatums continue to be made by educa-
tion technologists that universities must either ‘trans-
form or die’ in the face of technological progress (Bates
2004).
This unerring faith in the higher education ‘technical
fix’ (Robins & Webster 1989) is reflected in the billions
of dollars that are invested annually around the world in
various aspects of university use of ‘ICT’ (information
and communications technology). Aside from the
technology-enabled distance provision of higher educa-
tion, much of this funding is currently being directed
towards the on-campus application of ICTs. Indeed,
expenditure on universities’ computer infrastructures
has increased dramatically over the last decade as
institutions attempt to ‘blend’ ICTs into all aspects of
face-to-face teaching and learning, as well as into
students’ independent study. Lately, the burgeoning use

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of ‘virtual learning environments’ such as WebCT,
Blackboard, and Moodle has seen the concept of the
university campus moving away from a ‘bricks and
mortar’to a ‘clicks and mortar’model. In developed and
developing countries alike, computer technologies have
therefore become an icon of early 21st century higher
education provision.
Despite huge efforts to position computer technology
as a central tenet of university education, the fact that
many students and faculty make only limited formal
academic use of ICT during their teaching and learning
is less discussed by educational technologists. Belying
the notion of the ‘cyber-campus’, the actual formal use
of new technologies in undergraduate and graduate
studies remains inconsistent and highly variable from
course to course and institution to institution (Breen
et al. 2001; Marriott et al. 2004). Classroom uses of
potentially powerful information technologies are seen
to often take the reduced form of ‘mindless activities’
that do little to alter the expectations, assumptions, and
practices of higher education teaching (Moule 2003).
Indeed, the formal use of computer technologies in
many areas of higher education could best be described
as sporadic, uneven, and often ‘low level’ (in stark con-
trast to the often imaginative and informal uses that stu-
dents and faculty make of technologies like mobile
telephony and other personal digital devices). This situ-
ation has prompted some commentators to dismiss ICT
in higher education as nothing more than a ‘service’area
of curriculum and pedagogy which many students and
faculty are reluctant to engage with in an active or sus-
tained manner (Reffell & Whitworth 2002).
There is therefore a growing need for the education
community to account for the distinct ‘digital discon-
nect’ between the enthusiastic rhetoric and rather more
mundane reality of university ICT use. As is usually the
case in educational debate, blame for this disparity has
been most frequently attributed to deficits of skills,
motivation, and know-how on the part of students,
faculty, and the educational institutions themselves (e.g.
Keller 2005; Simmons et al. 2005). Yet this paper seeks
to distance itself from these usual ‘discourses of defi-
ciency’ and instead account for the (non-)use of ICT in
higher education in more nuanced and systematic terms.
In particular, it sets out to critically examine the social
construction of higher education ‘technology’ at its
many different levels – from the actions of government
and commercial bodies through to the day-to-day lived
N. Selwyn
experiences of the student. As has been noted before,
most writings on universities and ICT have tended to
gloss over these social, economic, political, and cultural
elements of higher education technology use which are
often harder to isolate, identify, and discuss (Newson
1999). With this in mind, the present paper considers the
wider social relations underpinning the integration of
computer technology in universities and, it is hoped,
therefore go some way to explaining the restrictive and
decidedly nontransformatory nature of formal use of
ICT in contemporary higher education.
Towards a critical perspective of higher
education and technology
Adopting a more critical perspective on higher educa-
tion and technology takes us beyond the immediate
concerns and preoccupations of most educational
technologists. As Torin Monahan (2005, p. 8) puts it,
rather than asking questions of ‘do computers work?’
we are instead concerned with asking ‘what social rela-
tions do they produce?’ Here, then, we can draw upon
three decades of studies of the social construction of
technology (SCOT) which have sought to document the
complex network of competing interests, agendas, and
power formations that underlie the seemingly straight-
forward ‘production’ of hardware and software for
domestic, scientific, and business markets (e.g.
MacKenzie & Wajcman 1985; Russell & Williams
2002). This shift in questioning involves consideration
of a wide range of stakeholders and influences which are
not immediately apparent when observing computer
use in the classroom, computer lab, or student hall of
residence. Indeed, it presupposes a complex layering to
any implementation and use of education technology,
from software developers, programmers, and marketers
in the commercial IT sector down to individual
university institutions, their departments, faculty, and
students. At all points along this analytical pathway we
therefore need to consider the roles of these different
actors in subtly (and not so subtly) shaping what ends up
constituting university ‘ICT’.
Yet we can also utilize the theoretical perspective of
Critical Theory and a lineage of work on technology and
society spanning from the Frankfurt School to the more
recent work of authors such as Andrew Feenberg (1991,
1999). This view of technology and education is sympa-
thetic to the SCOT approach yet attempts to look
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
A critical look at computer use in higher education
beyond the often avowedly microdescriptive SCOT
accounts of technology and emphasizes the overarching
political, economic, cultural, and social imperatives of
capitalist society which come to bear on any application
of technology. By combining these critical and Critical
Theory perspectives on technology, we can therefore set
out a wide-ranging picture of the construction of higher
education and ICT by a host of macro-, meso-, and
microlevel actors which are often unseen in their
influence. As Bakardjieva (2005, p. 7) reasons, we need
to set ourselves the task of ‘identifying social relations
that remain beyond the everyday horizon of the thinking
and acting subject, but are nevertheless crucial in deter-
mining the limits and possibilities in her thinking and
acting’. Only by identifying the full range of these
underlying relations and structures can we hope to iden-
tify a basis for meaningful and sustained change.
From this background we can now go on to consider
how computer use in higher education is being shaped
into an increasingly restricted set of positions by a
number of key actors and stakeholder interests. As we
shall discuss in the proceeding sections of the paper,
from the construction of ‘ICT’ at a national policy level
through to the place of computer use within the wider
student experience of university life, a consistent theme
emerges where higher education computer use is con-
structed in limited, linear, and rigid terms – far removed
from the creative, productive, and empowering applica-
tions which are often promoted by proponents of educa-
tion technology. In particular, we briefly consider four
main levels of shaping: government concerns with
global economic competitiveness; the commercial
interests of the for-profit information technology (IT)
industry; the ‘new managerial’ concerns of university
administrations; and the ‘lived’ experience of university
students. This is by no means an exhaustive inventory of
actors and influences, but it serves to illustrate the
complex wider construction of computer technology
use in higher education. We have, for example,
neglected purposely the pedagogic practices and
concerns of university faculty, as these have tended to
dominate most previous discussion of ICT and higher
education. Our deliberate focus on influences outside of
the classroom can, we hope, then be used to identify
some ‘hidden’ reasons underlying the apparent paucity
of ICT use ‘on the ground’ in universities and therefore
provide a starting point for alternative suggestions for
future change.
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
85
The economic concerns of government
We first turn to the government-level concerns of poli-
ticians and policy makers. National governments (and
indeed supranational unions such as the European
Union) exert a substantial level of control over the
nature and form of publicly and privately run universi-
ties through formal policy making, direct and indirect
funding, as well as other forms of support and coer-
cion. Whereas the nature of some of these political con-
cerns can be purely practical, more often than not there
is a distinct strategic element to higher education policy
making. In particular, the exponential expansion of
higher education systems in many developed countries
over the last 20 years has been firmly driven by a per-
ceived political need to respond to the needs of the
emerging knowledge-based economy and therefore
redefine the university ‘institution’ in light of the new
demands of a globalized economic competitiveness
(Urry 2002). In contrast to their elitist origins, the latter
half of the 20th century saw universities being appro-
priated by governments as a ready means through
which to produce a mass of educated and competent
citizens who could also double as highly skilled, highly
employable workers for knowledge economies (Daniel
1999). Thus, within contemporary higher-education
policy making, the logic of the technology-driven
global economy plays a driving role, not least in capi-
talizing upon the function of the university in produc-
ing the levels of human capital required for countries to
ensure their global economic competitiveness. Indeed,
university sectors in many countries are being com-
pelled by their governments to provide the labour
market with cohorts of ‘information-literate’ and ‘tech-
savvy’ graduates to drive (and be driven by) 21st
century capitalism.
Of course, such macro-economic shaping of technol-
ogy and higher education could be said to contribute to a
particular form of higher education ICT provision and
pedagogy. For instance, the political privileging of ICT
skills as a positional good both for national economic
competitiveness and individual graduate ‘employabil-
ity’ has inevitably led to an approach to ICTs in terms of
learning ‘about’ computer technology rather than
‘through’ computer technology. As Stahl (2004, p. 159)
describes, this influence on ICT provision in many uni-
versity departments culminates in a distinctly ‘tool-box’
model of technology use:
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Most universities today offer some kind of introduction
to computers and that usually includes an introduction to
the standard software used in business, namely Microsoft
Office. This sort of education is especially suited for
automation and e-teaching [but] automatically raises the
questions regarding who determines what is taught, what
the standards are, what the aim is.
As Stahl intimates, there are a number of moral, as well
as pedagogic, concerns with the construction of ICT in
these economically orientated ways. First, students are
argued to be directed towards very limited forms of
technology use based around the ‘transferable’ techni-
cal skills and operational know-how deemed useful in
future employment. This can be seen as mitigating
against the more novel, expansive, creative, and
unstructured forms of technology use believed by many
education technologists as lying at the heart of empow-
ering the individual user and learner. Moreover, the base
assumption that there is an insatiable demand from
employers for ‘knowledge workers’ boasting a range
of high-tech skills is being increasingly questioned.
Recent studies have suggested that graduates are
perhaps lacking most in social and interpersonal skills
rather than technological know-how (Taylor 2006). It
has therefore been argued that university graduates are
facing labour markets where overarching personal skills
and qualities are more vocationally valued than any spe-
cific ICT ability (i.e. Hesketh 2000; Mason 2004). From
this background, the technological ‘training’ of univer-
sity students may well not be of much vocational use, let
alone of educational merit.
The commercial concerns of IT vendors
Aside from these issues of political economy, we should
also consider how private sector interests shape the use
of technology in universities. Education technologists
often overlook the fact that the design, production, and
sale of education technology is almost wholly depen-
dent on commercial interests, most notably in the form
of the many transnational, national, and local IT compa-
nies responsible for the supplying of computer hard-
ware, software, and ‘content’. The for-profit sector also
plays a key role in the more subtle ‘selling’ of the
concept of education technology in order to sustain
demand for higher education use of ICT. In a more
detached sense, business and industry interests enjoy
privileged roles in shaping the governmental formation
N. Selwyn
of technology policy. In all, education technology is
predicated upon the involvement of commercial IT
firms and, it follows, that these private interests exert a
profound shaping influence on education technology.
Indeed, commercial interests are implicit in higher
education technology use in a number of pervasive ways
above and beyond equipping campuses with computers
and cabling. In terms of the direct selling of products,
many universities allow private firms to broker schemes
where students can either purchase or lease laptop com-
puters at subsidized rates. Similarly, most software and
hardware vendors provide ‘student’ versions of their
products to be sold by universities at subsidized prices.
Commercial interests are also inherent in the design and
development of the software used to drive ICT-based
teaching and learning. Many university courses are
administered and presented via highly structured virtual
learning environments, whilst most lectures are reliant
on so-called slideware – computer programs developed
for business presentations such as Microsoft’s ubiqui-
tous PowerPoint application. Thus, university campuses
represent a significant and potentially lucrative market
within which the IT industry operates.
From a neoliberal perspective, the blend of public and
private interests underpinning higher education ICT use
works well for all parties. On the one hand, govern-
ments and university administrators get the technology-
saturated campuses that they desire. Conversely, a
strong relationship with the university sector makes
sound commercial sense for the IT firms concerned.
Given that profits in the IT industry are to be found
mostly in adding value to existing products and
chasing the high-margin, high-profit upper ends of the
market, university students represent a convenient and
captive cluster of high-tech, high-disposable-income
consumers. Students themselves benefit from subsi-
dized exposure to the tools they will encounter and
the skills they will require in the world of graduate
employment. Market forces are seen to achieve all these
aims far more efficiently than any alternative models of
procurement – such as centralist state-directed produc-
tion of computer resources or the ‘in-house’ production
of software by individual universities.
Yet there are a number of less benign aspects to the
growing influence of industry and commerce in shaping
the higher education technology agenda in these ways.
For example, an obvious concern is that the ‘realpolitik’
of business mean that IT vendors have no sustained
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A critical look at computer use in higher education
commitment to the public good of education technology
above and beyond matters of profit and market share.
Indeed, there is the suspicion that higher education is
used as little more than a testing ground for second-rate
or embryonic ICT products, with ‘tax-payer subsidy . . .
thereby partially offsetting their losses and the absence
of any real market demand’ (Noble 2002, p. 83). The IT
industry’s concern with profit above educational
matters could also be said to restrict higher education
teaching and learning, with much computer-based
teaching and learning in universities following very
limited, business-orientated lines. This is perhaps most
apparent in the promotion of ‘Office’ applications and
training environments developed for the business sector
where the configured user for such products is not seen
to be in the classroom but the boardroom. This leaves
programs such as Blackboard and PowerPoint over-
loaded with the ‘material-semiotic infrastructure of
business’ (Fuller 2003, p. 160), and therefore demand-
ing and dictating decidedly hierarchical and linear
modes of technology use based around the (re)presenta-
tion and one-way distribution of information rather than
any more creative or empowering use of ICT. As Clegg
et al. (2003, p. 49) conclude, much ICT-based ‘learn-
ing’ therefore ‘merely mirror[s] simple information
giving functions’ valued in the business world for their
efficiency and clarity. Thus, students’ exposure to ICT
throughout their university courses rarely progresses
beyond the ‘PowerPointlessness’ of Office applications,
which reduce scholarship to ‘being taught how to for-
mulate client pitches and infomercials’ (Tufte 2003,
n.p.), whilst ‘routinely disrupt[ing], dominat[ing], and
trivializ[ing] [the] content’ of teaching and learning
(Guernsey 2001, p. 1).
The managerial concerns of university
administrations
From just these two examples, we can already see how
ICT use in universities is shaped by different actors
with different motives and rationales. In this sense, we
also need to contextualize university ICT use in terms
of the mounting administrative and managerial pres-
sures that higher education institutions face in relation
to recently ‘massified’ forms of higher education.
Indeed, the increasing use of ICT in universities over
the past 30 years is entwined with a parallel transfor-
mation of the general modus operandi of universities.
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
87
Since the 1980s, universities in most developed coun-
tries have found themselves having to cater for bur-
geoning numbers of students, whose enrolment has
generally not been matched by correspondingly
increased funding or resourcing. As previously
discussed, these changes have derived, in part, from
governmental concerns over global economic competi-
tiveness and the need for expanded numbers of
graduate-level ‘knowledge workers’. Yet these political
concerns have had profound effects on the day-to-day
operation of universities themselves. Higher education
systems in most countries have faced increasing finan-
cial accountability and pressure to perform efficiently
and profitably. There has, for example, been a creep
towards the performance-based funding of higher edu-
cation institutions, based around ‘through-put’ and
‘out-put’ criteria such as graduate placement in
employment, number of degrees awarded, and student
retention rates. All told, the guiding concerns of higher
education administrators have been substantially recast
along the lines of ‘new managerialism’, i.e. discourses
of management derived from the for-profit sector based
around issues of efficiency, effectiveness, moderniza-
tion, rationalization, and the ultimate reduction of
spending costs (Deem 2004). This has given rise to a
form of ‘academic capitalism’, with research and
development, patent production, and other commercial
ventures becoming core elements of the ‘business’ of
universities (Slaughter & Leslie 1997). Thus, universi-
ties have had to become more ‘entrepreneurial’ in their
approach (Clark 1998), not least in terms of ‘finding
effective ways of dealing with larger student numbers
and running more complex organisations’ Deem (2004,
p. 292).
New technologies have therefore been welcomed as
a ready solution to many of the issues faced by new
managerial university administrations. First and fore-
most, ICTs have become a vital part of the market
‘branding’ of higher education institutions, bestowing a
hi-tech veneer onto universities’ often low-tech prac-
tices. The use of computer-based and computer-
assisted teaching is seen to increase and ease
universities’ processing of students, without demand-
ing additional investment in costly physical resources
such as classrooms or staff. As Noble (2002, p. 29)
observes, computer technologies therefore lend
‘their institutions a fashionable forward-looking image
[whilst] reducing their direct labour and plant
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maintenance costs’. Computer technologies are also
central to the entrepreneurial pursuits of higher educa-
tion institutions, not least in reaching hitherto physi-
cally inaccessible but potentially lucrative markets of
overseas students. In a similarly entrepreneurial vein,
the digitalization of teaching leaves universities with a
legacy of electronic resources which are indefinitely
replicable, scaleable, and saleable – with intellectual
property rights crucially transferred from the tutor to
their employers. In all these instances, the ICT-
sustained massification of student numbers is a key
element of the creation and maintenance of a commer-
cial infrastructure which is now at the heart of the
effective and competitive university sector.
For some critical commentators, these shifts towards
technology-based effectiveness represent yet another
element of the irrevocable movement of higher educa-
tion away from its traditional ideological functions of
promoting reason, culture, and enlightenment (Read-
ings 1996). One could argue, for example, that the new
managerial application of ICTs has little concern with
enhancing the quality of higher education (see
Hirschheim 2005). Therefore, a model of ICT use
based on student throughput and market reach could be
seen as part of the wider ‘dumbing down’ and a lower-
ing of standards in contemporary higher education
(Leathwood & O’Connell 2003), with ‘only secondary
consideration given to the pedagogical and profes-
sional concerns that guided early experimentation and
innovation’ (Hamilton & Feenberg 2005, p. 304). There
is also an argument that this inexorably leads to deper-
sonalized and dehumanized forms of higher education,
and an overall ‘factory model’ of university education
which runs the risk of atrophying learning oppor-
tunities whilst dehumanizing both instructors and stu-
dents (Cooley 1999). Thus, far from becoming fluid
sites of learner-centred discovery, the 21st century
‘e-university’ could be said to merely propagate the
ongoing automation of higher education and, in the
final analysis, represent little more than a digital exten-
sion of Robert Reid’s ‘diploma mills’ of the mid-20th
century (Noble 2002). As Rudy Hirschheim (2005,
p. 101) concludes,
if the internet leads to a more standardised, minimalist
product targeted for a mass market, this will further ‘box
in’ and ‘dumb down’ education, resulting in a system that
does not support the endeavours of superior scholars and
thinkers.
N. Selwyn
The strategic concerns of students
Our final level of analysis is that of the individual stu-
dents themselves – a curiously neglected element of the
education technology equation given that students are
the ultimate ‘end users’ and beneficiaries of ICT-based
in university teaching and learning. It is particularly
revealing to consider university students in terms of
how they approach academic ICT use within their day-
to-day experience of ‘being a student’. Indeed, as
Gewirtz et al. (1995) argue, we must locate any analysis
of higher education within the ‘lived’ experiences of
individual students and therefore understand the act of
‘being a student’ in social, economic, political as well as
educational terms. In this sense, it is clear that there is a
lot more to the ‘job’ of being a student then learning
with (or without) computer technology – not least stu-
dents’ juggling of a number of academic and nonaca-
demic demands during their university careers, which
place them in various conflicting roles such as learner,
employee, socialite, and debtor.
Indeed, there is a complex interplay of forces which
come to bear on the current generation of students, and
these should be seen as key factors in students’ effec-
tiveness in ‘doing university’. Central to this challenge
is the consistent friction between academic success and
financial survival (see Hesketh 1999). Despite their
apparent affluence, increasing percentages of income
are being borrowed by students against future earnings,
in turn compounding the pressure to gain a ‘good’ grade
and therefore increase their chances of gaining a ‘good’
job. As with the universities in which they study, indi-
vidual students have been forced to become more
‘entrepreneurial’ in their negotiation of the massified
higher education landscape – some more successfully
than others. This fragmented and sometime fractious
nature of student life can therefore shed new light on the
often marginal place of computer-based learning.
Instead of being technophobic or lacking adequate
access, many students could be instead seen as ‘savvy’
but pressured consumers of higher education who often
engage with their studies in ruthlessly pragmatic, strate-
gic, and tactical ways. This can be seen in terms of a
number of short, medium, and longer-term issues with
regard to ICT-based learning.
For example, from a short-term perspective students’
reading of ICT must be set against the ‘consequential
validity’of assessment, i.e. ‘the effect of the test or other
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
A critical look at computer use in higher education
form of assessment on learning and other educational
matters’ (Boud 1995, p. 38). For many students, the
peripheral role that ICT takes in the assessment
demands of their university courses (besides the word-
processing of essays and cursory searching of the World
Wide Web) provides a clear strategic impetus not to
make extensive use of ICT. As Knight (1995) argues that
students can often view assessment as a ‘moral’ activity
by teaching staff, making it abundantly clear what is
valued in their courses and by higher education in
general. The fact that most university courses retain a
focus on summative assessment and the ‘culture of the
grade’therefore shapes students’ approaches to learning
in limited ‘syllabus-bound’ ways (Norton et al. 2001).
Thus, the timed paper-and-pencil examination, the
practical lab test, and class test all mitigate against
extensive use of ICT.
Similarly, students’ medium-term perspectives on
successfully completing their degrees and being
awarded a reasonable classification could be seen as
equally as ‘ICT-free’. In the relatively short life of a
modular degree scheme built around continuous assess-
ment, there is simply no time to develop new skills at the
risk of jeopardizing work and, ultimately, final examina-
tion grades and degree classifications. Given the purely
incidental and conflicting role that ICT plays in their
degree courses, many students have little medium-term
incentive to continue to use ICTs and are compelled
instead to adopt ‘low-level’ approaches to studying:
many learners at different times tend to adopt either a
surface approach to their study, characterised by a focus
on rote learning, memorisation and reproduction, a lack
of reflection and a preoccupation with completing the
task; or a strategic approach, characterised by a focus on
assessment requirements and lecturer expectations, and a
careful management of time and effort, with the aims of
achieving high grades. (Mann 2001, p. 7, emphasis in
original)
Even in terms of students’ longer-term perspective of
gaining graduate employment and establishing careers,
ICTs could be said to play a peripheral role. As their
degree progresses, students fast become ‘portfolio
people’ (Wright et al. 1999), driven by building their
resumes, personal development plans, and the like. In
contrast to the views of politicians and university
administrators, ICT is often seen by students as being a
basic, but not ultimately essential, element of develop-
ing their ‘marketability’ to employers. After 15 years in
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
89
ICT-saturated school environments, many students are
confident in meeting the levels of ICT skill expected by
employers and in their abilities to fulfil these expecta-
tions as and when required. Crucially, this is often not
seen as being contingent on sustained use of ICT during
their years of university education.
Identifying the political, economic, and social
precedents of higher education technology use
So far in this paper we have argued that only if we place
ICT within the different contexts where higher educa-
tion is politically and socially constructed can we begin
to understand the ways in which computer technologies
are eventually used and not used. Of course, in making
these points we should remain wary of being overly
‘macro’ determinist in our analysis. There is a danger
of crudely caricaturing higher education as simply a
servant to the demands of the global economy and
blindly following the unforgiving logic of contempo-
rary flexible capitalism. As is constantly pointed out
throughout the mainstream ‘ed-tech’literature, there are
a host of individualized, psychological, and educational
factors also at play here whose influence on university
computer use cannot be denied or discounted
completely. Neither are we seduced into being too
socially determinist in our analysis, instead remaining
mindful that all the social processes identified in this
may well influence but do not in themselves determine
the nature and use of an education technology, which
remains socio-technical in nature.
Thus, we are not claiming that computer technologies
are purely the embodiment of wider social relations and
therefore have no technological form, function, or
merit. Neither are we denying the many instances of
technological good practice which abound in university
settings around the world. Yet we are asserting that
when celebrating the educational potentials of ICTs,
educational technologists should remain mindful
that whilst technological progress may well ‘achieve
advances of general utility such as ease, convenience
and speed, the concrete form in which these advances
are realised is determined by the social power under
which they are made’ (Bakardjieva 2005, p. 15). This,
we argue, leaves the political, economic, and social pre-
cedents of higher education technology use deserving
of fuller consideration by the education technology
community than has been the case to date.
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Indeed, in focusing on the social relations of univer-
sity ICT and mapping its links to the political economy
of higher education, we have been able to fashion a
powerful set of reflections on education in the era of the
globalized ‘knowledge’ economy. Throughout the dif-
ferent levels of our analysis a recurring observation has
been that when the focus of higher education shifts from
one of educational concern to grappling with the per-
ceived demands of globalzation, market economics,
industry, and commerce, then the net result is a height-
ened straight-jacketing and restructuring of universities
and those within them. Thus, we have seen how a
variety of noneducationally focused values, ideologies,
and power relations are ‘hardwired’ into higher educa-
tion computer use with varying effect ‘on the ground’.
In particular, we have outlined an insidious process of
fragmented centralization imbued within the current
higher education ‘ICT’ agenda – often purporting to
decentralize control to the learner whilst actually
advancing more subtle forms of centralized social
control over all elements of the higher education
system.
Thus, it could be said that ICTs are being shaped by a
number of vested interests whose guiding motives are to
more efficiently and effectively ‘play the game’ of
higher education – a game which is now based upon a
set of new managerial rules. Thus, policy stakeholders’
approaches to using ICTs are predicated upon wider
strategies of making the most of universities in their
guise as ‘instruments of economic growth and social
inclusivity’ (Pelletier 2004, p. 11). Commercial actors
are primarily concerned with positioning themselves for
short-term gains in the higher education ICT market
whilst also securing the longer-term capture of high-
income graduate consumers of their products. Higher
education institutions are primarily appropriating ICTs
as technologies of discipline and rationalization in the
face of mounting new managerial pressures. This leaves
those in the classroom with a similar set of strategic
concerns. The crucial point here is that all these actors
pursue such self-interested aims for very good and
sometimes laudable reasons. Thus, the fact that com-
puter technologies are not being deployed in ways that
are educationally or technically desirable is often not
due to a set of deficiencies, barriers, or misunderstand-
ings which can be easily overcome. Instead, the flawed
use of computer technologies is, by and large, a product
of the wider ‘game’of higher education and the strategic
N. Selwyn
interests of those who play it. This is perhaps best illus-
trated in our analysis of the lived experience of students,
who can be said to exercise a very considered, rational,
and reflexive (non)engagement with university-based
ICT. In this sense, as Robins and Webster (1999, p. 202)
contend, in critically engaging with ICTs in this way,
students are displaying little more than ‘the requisite for
the adaptability and opportunism demanded in the
dauntingly flexible world of informational capitalism’.
Laudable or not, these shapings of computer-based
teaching and learning in higher education result in a
number of what we would consider undesirable
outcomes. This is evident both in the language of the
new managerial application of technology and in the
language of those who contest it. Thus, we have seen
how the perceived advantages of ICT are described in
terms of ‘efficiency’, ‘effectiveness’, ‘modernization’,
and ‘rationalization’. We have similarly seen how the
disadvantages are portrayed in terms of ‘immorality’,
‘dehumanization’, ‘atrophy’, ‘disenchantment’, and
‘alienation’. We would contend that none of these quali-
ties could be considered as forming the basis of an
enhanced, emancipatory, and enlightening form of
higher education provision. There is a danger therefore
that the recent haste to ‘implement’ computer technolo-
gies in higher education teaching and learning has
caused many educationalists and technologists to lose
sight of the guiding principles and underlying purposes
of university education.
In this sense, we can see how education technology is
not a new or neutral blank canvas (as is disingenuously
claimed by many) but a site of intense conflict and
choice. Thus, in continuing to pursue the implementa-
tion of computer technologies in higher education set-
tings, educators are not making technical choices but
ideological and political ones. Therefore, the key issue
that we finally need to address in our analysis is that of
the potential for change. To what extent is the shaping of
university ICT use ‘closed’ before it reaches the campus
(Bijker et al. 1987), or to what extent do these dominant
constructions of ‘new managerial’ forms of computer
technology use remain open to being challenged, recon-
textualized, and reshaped along more equitable and
educationally desirable lines? In other words, we need
to consider what steps (if any) are required to foster
a more expansive and empowered use of computer
technology within future cohorts of university students
and faculty. Are there nontraditional agencies and
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
A critical look at computer use in higher education
possibilities for a wider ‘grass roots’ involvement in the
social shaping of higher education technology or are we
simply facing a predetermined and disempowered situ-
ation where ‘the space left for practitioners in higher
education is either to embrace the new media enthusias-
tically or to stand aside and watch its inevitable unfold-
ing’ (Clegg et al. 2003, p. 39)?
Engineering a critical renaissance of higher
education technology use?
Given the wealth of pessimistic evidence that we have
covered thus far, it is tempting to concur with Clegg’s
rather gloomy conclusion that the limited implementa-
tion of computer technology in higher education is
inevitable and fast unfolding. Indeed, from a Critical
Theory perspective it could be argued that the way tech-
nology is used in education and thereby contributes to
its further commodification is, in the final analysis,
endemic in capitalism itself. If this is so, then nothing
less than a wholesale re-engineering of the dominant
capitalist economic system and its incentives will stand
a chance of achieving change. This is a historically
proven argument and one which we have much sympa-
thy for. Yet it may be that the increased public engage-
ment with and questioning of new ICTs such as the
Internet offers some scope for a more equitable recon-
struction of technology use in a public sphere such as
higher education (Feenberg 1999). It may be that we are
able to at least consider critical alternatives to an out-
right repudiation of technology and explore the oppor-
tunities (however, slight) for its reconstruction rather
than vilification (Kellner 2001). It is in this spirit that we
choose to conclude our discussion.
Indeed, there has been a marked trend of late amongst
critical observers of education technology to argue for a
‘bottom-up’ recapturing and reconfiguring of the dis-
courses surrounding higher education and ICT. Indeed,
this prevailing spirit of optimism has prompted a
number of critical scholars to take the present shortcom-
ings of higher education computer use as a starting point
from which to propose radically alternative models of
technology use based on democratic and culturally
diverse principles. For example, as Benson and Harkavy
(2002) reason, technologies could well offer a chance
for radically reinventing and ‘saving the soul of the uni-
versity’ in light of the changing global educational
context. In other words, it is felt by a growing number of
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
91
critical commentators that ICTs have the potential to be
used for an epistemological and cultural updating and
repositioning of the university – away from the instru-
mental and homogenized model of the corporatized uni-
versity and towards a ‘global-cosmopolitan’ model
of technology-driven higher education. Thus, many
authors have been exploring ways in which universities
can utilize old and new technologies to ‘reinvent them-
selves as places of encounter for cultures and knowl-
edges from across the world’ (Robins & Webster 2002,
p. 322).
Crucially, it is argued that these changes can be
achieved by a reshaping of computer-based learning by
those within the four walls of the university. This is seen
to require a shift in focus from the representational
capabilities of ICTs (i.e. their ability to represent com-
moditized informational delivery modes of higher
education) to their more expansionist and relational
potentials, not least ‘the creation of an environment for
social interaction between geographically and tempo-
rally distant users’ (Hamilton & Feenberg 2005, p. 108).
This, it is argued, can move computer technologies
beyond the limited and linear models and relationships
of higher education as they are currently being
articulated. Instead, the higher education community
could themselves reshape computer technology along
the lines of a networked, decentralized, and radically
different form of university education:
there is now wide latitude for faculty intervention and
participation in shaping the terms on which [ICT] will
impact the academic labour process, the division of aca-
demic labour, and ownership of intellectual resources. It
is now clear that online education will not destroy the
university as we know it. Its future will be determined
ultimately by the politics of the very institution it prom-
ised to replace only a few years ago. (Hamilton &
Feenberg 2005, p. 117)
So what may a more decentred and transgressive model
of faculty- and learner-shaped higher education com-
puter technology look like? In pursuing this line of
thinking, some authors have offered examples of radical
reworkings of education technology which follow the
interests of the academy rather than the economy. For
example, universities have been urged to break free
from the Microsoft/PC hegemony of technological pro-
curement and turn instead to open-source software and
hardware which are seen to offer increased flexibility
and control to tutors and students as well as facilitating
92
communal models of collaborative creation in the direct
shaping of the software being used for learning
(Raymond 1998). As Van De Bunt-Kokhuis (2004,
p. 269) contends, ‘open source software like LINUX,
might serve to democratize higher education and allow
greater grassroots input’. Students and tutors have been
similarly encouraged to break open the ‘black box’ of
software code and modify software according to their
own need and demands – much as ‘games modders’ do
with video games (Kirkpatrick 2005). Similarly, it is
suggested that local technologists strive to influence the
design of new buildings along more flexible, network-
able, and ‘recombinant’ lines (Mitchell 1995).
Heartening as it is believed that a more benign
technology-driven future is within the grasp of practi-
tioners and educationalists, we would contend that these
reimaginings of university computer use are somewhat
simplistic in the face of the many competing shaping
interests which – as we have seen – also come to bear on
higher education technology. In particular, these
reworkings of university computer use along more
emancipatory lines assume a political reworking of
higher education far beyond the scope of well-
intentioned activist educators. As such, these arguments
merely mirror wider idealistic debates within the aca-
demic community over the possible future of higher
education. For example, in proposing alternatives to the
‘ruins’ of the contemporary university, authors such as
Readings (1996) have similarly urged the university to
become a locus of dissensus, with teaching and learning
becoming increasingly decentred and transgressive.
Yet, in this global-economic, new managerial climate
of higher education, such notions of grass-roots,
practitioner-led change are ambitious at best – a point
conceded by those proposing such conclusions. As
Robins and Webster (2002) acknowledge, the establish-
ment of the technology-led global cosmopolitan univer-
sity would, at best, involve a protracted ‘struggle’. We
would go further than this and argue that without a
wholesale societal and cultural rethinking of what
higher education is and what interests higher education
should serve in a capitalist society, then such discus-
sions over the potential reshaping of ICTs are ultimately
destined to fail.
Indeed, those seeking to reimagine the use of com-
puter technologies in university teaching and learning
along more equitable and democratic lines should
recognize that the current new managerial-led model of
N. Selwyn
higher education ICT use will be an incredibly difficult
paradigm to alter. Government policy concerns over
global economic competitiveness are unlikely to be
easily realigned. The entrenched for-profit interests of
the IT industry will be hard to shift or counter, with IT
firms unwilling to leave the higher education market-
place without a fight. Whilst university faculty may be
keen to embrace a destructured exchange of ideas and
debate, their students may be less willing to indulge in
the luxury of learning for learning’s sake – committed
as they are to entering the less-cosseted and idealistic
world of employment. Thus, unless the entire nature of
contemporary higher education is radically realigned,
then we would argue that there is little hope that the
narrow shaping of academic computer technology
use described in this paper can ever be meaningfully
challenged. Thus, our conclusion is that the only way to
achieve meaningful change in the ways in which com-
puter technologies are used in higher education is to
strive to engineer a radical overall and wholesale
restructuring of universities and university education.
Rather than tinkering around the technological edges,
education technologists would be best served by lobby-
ing for ‘radical alterations to the way we structure and
organise our systems/institutions/processes of lifelong
learning’ (Ó Fathaigh 2002, n.p.). Whilst there is a
techno-romantic tendency amongst critical commenta-
tors to focus on the micropolitics of technological resis-
tance and reshaping, we would therefore argue that
more sustained change can only arise from a concentra-
tion on the micropolitics of non-technological educa-
tion resistance.
In this sense, it is the non-technological politics
rather than the technological practices of higher educa-
tion which should now be of primary concern to educa-
tion technologists. Instead of the cosy bipartisan
political consensus which currently exists around the
inherent benefits of any investment in educational
ICT, politicians and policymakers should be lobbied
to think more carefully about their current ‘skills’-
dominated approach to education technology –
especially in light of the need for more flexible,
reflexive, creative, and intuitive users of technology in
the global knowledge economy. Students (and their
parents) can be encouraged to be more critical and
politicized consumers of their higher education,
actively opposing the increased automation and dehu-
manization of the student learning experience, instead
© 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
A critical look at computer use in higher education
of passively accepting and, at best, attempting to
work around it. Teaching unions and other pro-
fessional bodies can similarly challenge the
de-professionalization of their members that much ICT
use appears to entail. Individual universities can
employ consumerist strategies of boycotting in order to
leverage policy and product change, whereas the share-
holders of IT companies can be made aware of the
public benefits (and likely increased profitability) of
fairly dealing with the educational marketplace. Lever-
ing such changes will, of course, be a monumental task
and may well be doomed to fail given the dominant
overarching structures of global capitalism which so
define higher education in contemporary society. Yet
the sooner that these nontechnological issues are
engaged with, then the sooner that the undoubted
potential of computer technologies for higher educa-
tion be realized.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank the anonymous referees
for their comments on an earlier draft of the paper.
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